This is a video I did for a school district on Teacher Self-Care for the New School Year. I wanted to share it with you here so that we can all remember to take care of ourselves as the obligations, responsibilities, and therefore, stress build up. Speaking of stress, you'll have to forgive the barking dog. Apparently my neighbor's pooch wanted to get into Show Business. . .

In any event, please enjoy the video, and if you are interested in showing this video to your staff or at your next event, be my guest! Let's all help spread the message of teacher self-care.

Several years ago, I walked into my nine year-old daughter’s room where she was watching a cooking show on the Food Network. Paula Deen, the host, was preparing a meal with guest Henry Winkler. Immediately I was struck by how old Henry Winkler looked. Wearing Docker-style slacks, a button down shirt, and longish, silver hair, he puttered around the kitchen like a kindly grandfather making himself a little nosh.

“Whatcha watching?” I asked my daughter.

“a cooking show,” she said. She gestured at the television. “I think he’s a famous actor or something.”

I looked at Henry Winkler, and then I looked at my daughter.

“Uh, yeah,” I said, trying not to sound too patronizing. “He’s The Fonz.”

My daughter just stared at me.

How do you explain The Fonz to a nine year-old in the 21st Century?

How do you put into words the wonder, the mystery, the unexplainable “cool,” of The Fonz?

The detachment? The Fluidity? The Zone?

How do you explain The Inexplicable Zen of The Fonz?

Answer: You don’t.

Not only could I not articulate the significance of Fonzie’s contribution to what it meant to be cool, detached, masculine, completely in tune with your universe, but I had to admit that, when it came down to it, even Richie, Potsie, and Ralph didn’t really understand it, either.

For them, the key word was acceptance.

When I was thirteen, which was exactly three hundred and fifty years ago, I sat in front of the television, saw Fonzie snap his fingers, and watched as girls emerged from the woodwork of Arnold’s and swarmed around him, hanging on his black leather jacket as if he had used a bug sprayer to fill the room with his pitch-perfect pheremones. As if that weren’t enough, Fonzie’s office was a burger joint rest room. He sanctioned the activities in his world by simply raising a thumb. He intimidated bullies with a twitch of his lip. He made the joint jump with music with just a slight tap of fist on the jukebox. He could articulate thirty-seven different messages through the manipulation of the single syllable, “Ayyyyy.”

The Zen of Fonzie’s abilities bordered on Magic.

Fonzie was the zenith of detached, unemotional masculine coolness, and I wanted in. So as I sat there in 1976 eating popcorn in my bean bag chair, I thought “that’s the job for me.”

But life, of course, is never that simple.

Fonzie--which is an abstract essence that exists in the cosmos and is not to be confused with Arthur Fonzerelli who worked at the local garage, talked politely to Mr. C., and lived above the Cunningham’s garage—knew most or all of life’s secrets and wasn’t talking. He could fix cars, seduce women, and pilot a mean-looking motorcycle without breaking a sweat or a smile.

All the boys at my school wanted to BE the Fonz, while all the Girls merely wanted to TAME him.

One night at a time.

There was no one like The Fonz before Happy Days, and there has been no one since. He is one of those rare, one-of-kind icons, a unique definition of certain kind of manhood. Not necessarily the kind you always want to exhibit, but the part of your manhood you want to exhibit when the “nice guy” approach isn’t working.

You want to be The Fonz when the guy cuts you off in traffic, when the neighbor blocks your driveway with his RV, when the drunk guy at the party comes on to your wife. You don’t necessarily want to resort to violence, but you want the other guy to know that, if it came down it, you might. All American men my age would like to think we still have a smidgeon of the Fonz inside us.

And needless to say, The Fonz would never use the word, “smidgeon.”

And even though I could have done without the black T-shirts, the teaching credential, the precocious daughter figure (although I currently possess all of these), and even though I could certainly live the rest of my life without ever again hearing the expression “Exact-a-mundo,” The Fonz still is one of the earliest expression of a kind of Zen masculinity from my childhood that I sometimes summon to help me navigate through this morass we call life.

Now that I’m living in the suburbs in a master planned community complete with block parties and HOA fees, and the neighborhood kids call me Mr. T. (a much sillier corruption of Mr. C. thanks to that other 70’s phenomenon, The A-Team), I’d almost forgotten what The Fonz had meant to me. The possibility of developing a sense of masculine Zen so cool and icy and confident that a simple “thumbs up” communicates your approval now seems so quaint and out of reach. Nevertheless, I was glad for the opportunity to tell my young daughter about the nature of The Fonz, even it was tough going.

“He played a character called The Fonz,” I said, as Henry Winkler shuffled around Paula Dean’s studio kitchen. As always, he seemed like a really nice, unassuming guy.

“Fonzie was really cool.”

​That doesn’t seem to cover it, so I elaborate.

“Uh, really cool.” She stares at me again. I exhale. This time I use my hands for emphasis.

If we’re still enough, we can start to listen to those little leadings that occur very deep inside us.

No, not those leadings. . .Try to stay with me.

I’m talking about those impulses we get that tell us whether or not we should do something.

Or not do something.

I’m talking about those little voices that say things like:

“Take the job”“Move to Florida”“Do NOT date that guy. He lives in his mother’s basement and has the largest collection of Brady Bunch memorabilia in the continental United States. Bad move! What about Brent in accounting? He seems nice.”

Some call this conscience.

Some call this a "gut reaction.”

Some simply call this a “hunch.”

But really, what everybody is talking about is a little thing called intuition.

Intuition is a knowing, an insight, or an understanding of circumstances that happens seemingly without conscious reasoning.

But as a society, we are very practical and we poo-poo the idea of listening to our inner wisdom. Especially in education, we want facts, data, smart goals.

But you know when your classroom needs a makeover. Or when a lesson needs an adjustment. Or when a student needs something that the state testing scores just haven’t unearthed.

You just know. . .But how?

In addition to your experience, your common sense, and your professional judgment, gifted teachers stop and listen to their intuition—even if they can’t articulate why—because they know those little voices are picking up on data we cannot experience consciously or sometimes can't even put into words.

But gifted teachers learn to listen.

Here are some things you should know about intuition:

*It’s usually right.*It’s a muscle that can be built and toned*Listening to it takes practice*It wants to help you.*It often takes stillness and silence to get it to come to you.*It’s patient, but it isn’t loud*It waits for you to be still, to value silence, to want to listen.

So as we move into this new school year, remember that in addition to using your teaching experience, your common sense, and your professional judgment, please also remember to be still and listen to your intuition.

Because while it will whisper when you least expect it, you can rest assured that it will whisper.